It is well known that power control is critical for CDMA (code division multiple access) wireless systems such as those based on the IS-95 standard (e.g., see Holtzman, J. M., "CDMA Power Control for Wireless Networks," in Third Generation Wireless Information Networks, S. Nanda and D. J. Goodman (eds), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, Mass., 1992; and TIA/EIA/IS-95 Interim Standard, Mobile Station-Base Station Compatibility Standard for Dual-Mode Wideband Spread Spectrum Cellular System, Telecommunication Industry Association, July 1993). The ultimate objective of power control in CDMA systems is to achieve a desired speech quality on a particular link at a minimum transmit power level. Without effective power control, the capacity gains expected from a CDMA wireless system will not be realized. This is especially true for the reverse link (uplink) of a CDMA system (i.e., from a mobile station to a base station). Unless the transmit power of the mobile station is tightly controlled, the reverse link will not be able to operate at or near its potential capacity in a cellular communications environment (e.g., fading, etc.).
Realizing the importance of power control for the reverse link, the IS-95 standard has provided for a power control scheme known in the art as "inner loop power control." In this scheme, a base-station transmits a 1-bit feedback signal to a mobile station every 1.25 milliseconds (ms). The 1-bit value of this feedback signal is representative of whether an estimate of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (E/N.sub.0) of the received signal at the base station (transmitted from the mobile station) exceeds, or falls below, a target signal-to-noise ratio E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T. Correspondingly, when the mobile station receives this feedback signal, the mobile station raises its transmit power by 1 dB or lowers it by 1 dB depending on the value of the feedback bit. Thus, the inner loop power control scheme provided by the IS-95 standard helps maintain the signal-to-noise ratio of the received signal at the base-station close to the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T.
As noted above, the ultimate objective of a power control scheme in the context of CDMA systems is to achieve a desired speech quality on a particular link at a minimum transmit power level. A simple, quantifiable, measure of the speech quality on a link is the associated frame error rate (FER) on that link. For CDMA systems based on IS-95, the desired speech quality can be said to have been achieved on a link if the FER is at or below a certain level (e.g., 1%). For a given fading environment, the FER is a function of the average E.sub.b /N.sub.0 at the receiver. Since, as described above, inner loop power control helps maintain the receiver E.sub.b /N.sub.0 close to the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T, the FER is, ultimately, determined by the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T. Therefore, to achieve the desired speech quality in a given fading environment, the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T needs to be set at a level which is appropriate for that environment.
Unfortunately, there is no fixed E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T target that achieves the desired FER in all fading environments. Therefore, those in the art have developed an adaptive mechanism that adjusts the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T accordingly. This mechanism, referred to hereafter as "Reverse Outer Loop Power Control" (ROLPC) monitors the FER and changes the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T depending on whether the FER is below, or above, a desired threshold. By directly using the FER to drive the target E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T, the current ROLPC achieves its objective very well in reasonably steady fading environment. However, since the FER monitoring process implicit in this technique is rather slow (with time constants of the order of a couple of seconds), its performance can deteriorate in a dynamic environment with rapidly changing fading characteristics.
As such, in order to improve the speed of the ROLPC, the commonly assigned U.S. patent application of Carl Weaver and Wei Peng, entitled "Symbol Error Based Power Control For Mobile Telecommunication System," Ser. No. 08/346,800, filed Nov. 30, 1994, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,727,033, describes a symbol error (SE) based technique which potentially improves the performance of ROLPC in a dynamic fading environment. This Fixed SE rate (SER) target ROLPC technique, which is based on the premise that the SER and FER are strongly correlated, tries to maintain the SER close to a pre-determined fixed target SER value. Thus, after every frame the associated symbol error count is compared with the target SER and the E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T target is raised or lowered depending upon whether the symbol error count was above or below the SER target. The updated E.sub.bT /N.sub.0T target is used to generate inner loop feedback bits during the next frame.